


Last Night I Fell

by hocotate



Series: Oneshots [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Drug Use, Flashbacks, M/M, Post-War, Prostitution, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 11:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11576766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hocotate/pseuds/hocotate
Summary: Long after the war has ended, a heavy rainstorm arrives in the city. In another time, Baekhyun holds hands with a stranger at a bus stop.Alternative title: The Rain Hums in B Flat Minor





	Last Night I Fell

Baekhyun was only halfway through life when a god-given storm came crashing in from above. It was heavy, overwhelming, like a thousand pieces of the sky raining down, and his pathetic self was weak enough to cede to it his future heartbeats and every memory he could have made. Perhaps it was really God or some other great power having finally decided that his time was due, or maybe nothing more than the result of his own weakness; it didn’t really matter as it hurt nevertheless, as each small raindrop felt like a piece of shattered glass while sounding to him like a humming infantry releasing hundreds of rounds at innocent children.  
  
Lying limp on the cold, wet highway with all kinds of drugs running through his veins, he wondered what kind of life he could have led be it not for himself having lived too cowardly to change. Regretting every choice and every followed order, every ruined friendship and click of a gun, he recalled for a moment his finger on the trigger, aiming not for others but for his own bruised temple. Of course there was no one there to hear him stutter out apologies that were sincere but as pointless, but he thought, at least, that something must have counted as his lips were pressed against the asphalt and dripping, the heavy rain whipping him senseless while hopefully washing a few of his sins away.  
  
The end moved closer in the form of headlights, and as he waited for his limbs to respond, he wept as it all flashed right before his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The war had been tough, but what followed was harder; God had taken his left leg as a token, forever reminding what was left of him then that killing for the sake of one’s motherland or leader is as bad as, if not worse than killing just for fun. His dearest friend had been blown into pieces not due to justice but cowardice and betrayal, and living with that—the shame and the guilt—hurt more than the lack of local anaesthesia during an impromptu amputation in the middle of some battlefield.  
  
Crawling around alleys like some deformed stray dog, among bottles and gravel had become Baekhyun’s life then, his favourite pastime since there apart from that was nothing else for him to do but to inject into his bloodstream any poison he could steal. Selling his body to officers and dealers had been useful at first, a way to pay for room on some cum-stained couch, but with each returning client came a line of new bruises and with each new bruise followed five infected track marks.  
  
His limbs aching from more than just the drugs had stopped being worth it when his profit decreased as though offering himself as a sex slave on demand had ever been anything else than survival fron the start. Whilst the pain of getting slapped while fucked into by strangers had soon lost its potency in comparison to meth bugs, there was no longer any point in begging for customers when none were willing to spend more than a few coins.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t that bad then, after all, that the night on which he died came faster than planned.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“ _Baek, watch out–”_  
  
_Yixing’s voice got drowned out by screams that followed the sound of a sudden explosion, the wailing of mothers hugging their children whilst clutching the hands of mutilated elders. Had the war not broken out had the distance between himself and his comrade not been too great for him to conquer in a minute, but the separating field was too empty to cross, spattered with the remains of those many who had tried._  
  
_He kept shouting and shouting at the top of his lungs even as their unit made a move on those civilians, continued to wave his arms in the air as though that wouldn’t help the enemy locate him._  
  
“ _Over here! Baekhyun, the kids–”_  
  
_Another projectile hit a nearby building, leaving everything around as jumbled and chaotic as Baekhyun’s mind as he spotted Yixing on the ground. There was panic in the air, wrapped tightly around each fired bullet, an excuse for soldiers to aim at those noncombatants who woke up this morning to death instead of birdsong. Baekhyun, of course, had seen it all, was one of those razing these houses to the ground; he saw the fear and could hear their grief embodied by cries and distinct weeping, yet he sought refuge behind some demolished abutment, peeking through the holes of rubble and limbs._  
  
“ _Xing, I can’t!” he sobbed in response to his best if not only friend shouting his name over and over from across that field on which bodies were piling up. “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” he kept crying in a frenzy in spite of all that which was happening before him, in spite of him watching Yixing from afar and in spite of his limping and bleeding comrade keeping children away from his own very infantry who had been ordered to annihilate each innocent citizen._  
  
“ _What are you waiting for!” was the last thing he heard before he covered his ears to block out the sound of people dying. “Baek, help me get these kids across! Baekhyun, please! Remember our promi–”_  
  
_Yixing’s life ended on a landmine, all because of Baekhyun who had always been a coward._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Perhaps it was an angel that stood towered above him, reaching down to caress his cheek which was cold and wet and growing paler by the minute. Perhaps the stranger smiling at him warmly as he lay there dying with his insides on the ground was one of the seraphim sent by God to carry him away, telling him calmly now with the softest of voices that darkness is but one stop on the road.  
  
“I need more time,” was what Baekhyun gasped then, knowing that he had never atoned for his sins. “Give me more time,” was the last thing he asked for, squinting at the shining one who looked so familiar.  
  
The answer he got was nothing but a whisper, pronounced by a boy looking many years younger than his own broken body which was already beyond saving.  
  
“You’ll have lots, Baek,” he heard, and shut his own eyes, listening as silence replaced the sound of rain. “There’s lots of time left for you here. Just wait and see, and you’ll forgive yourself soon.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“The war just broke out.”  
  
Baekhyun glanced briefly at the one who just spoke, at the pretty stranger who looked around his own age. There was a frown on that face, a sullen expression which was not at all matching the softness of his features, and although they stood hiding beneath some worn down bus stop, his clothes looked wet and dripping enough to quench the thirst of an impoverished nation.  
  
Baekhyun shrugged as he recalled the news that had been spread and discussed all over campus that morning.  
  
“Yeah, I heard.”  
  
Turning his attention back to the road, he prayed for the bus to come and take them away before the roof above collapsed entirely. A ravaging storm had just arrived in the city and it didn’t seem like it would go away soon, but although the rain would keep pouring for weeks, creating torrents that would flood the university’s basement, Baekhyun admitted that it wasn’t that bad in comparison to that which was happening elsewhere. Although the war involved the whole country and every nation that happened to be adjoining, combat was for now concentrated to the outskirts and would thus not really bother himself and this stranger for at least a few months or even a year, if they were lucky.  
  
He kept staring into the distant darkness, searching for any signs of the awaited bus as the stranger beside him nudged his shoulder.  
  
“It really sucks, huh? The war."  
  
He nodded, a bit detached from reality as water began to seep through his soles to fill every space of his tattered shoes. Standing there trampling cigarette stumps in puddles as he could no longer get any wetter, anyway, he cursed himself for having put on sneakers since he had, in fact, paid attention to the forecast.  
  
“Sure does,” was all he mumbled in response, all while wondering in the back of his mind if the world would actually end with this storm. There was no bus in sight nor any other vehicle or human, so to think of this being the end of all things would not be more preposterous than fearing a war which they knew would surely reach even them, eventually.  
  
He might have been just a callow student, but he knew well not to be too optimistic.  
  
Silence followed save for branches breaking free from trees only to get thrown by the wind against the bus stop with force. It didn’t last that long, though, the lack of words, as the sombre-looking stranger reached to tug at his sleeve.  
  
“Do you believe in God?”  
  
Baekhyun raised an eyebrow at that question, once again looking at the talkative other. The familiarity of that face was what hit him then as soon as their eyes finally met, but he couldn’t place it or even remember vaguely where they could possibly have met or exchanged words before. He might have just seen him around campus at some point, and so did he choose not to dwell on such trifles.  
  
“Yes, I do. God is real,” he answered instead of asking for a name, watching the other’s eyes grow wide before narrowing into an expression of disappointment and an atheist’s doubt. Not really minding a discussion on belief since the bus driver must have got stuck in the flood, Baekhyun continued without having been asked to, his conviction strong for no particular reason. “This might sound crazy to you, whatever your name is, but I know that God exists. I don't really know how, though, but it's true, I do. I also know that he keeps quiet when we’re good, then punishes us when we do something evil since that’s how he works and how everything should work. That’s why this storm came just this morning, you know, because the war–”  
  
“You’re wrong.” The stranger cut him off with an octave too high and with something like desperation flickering in his gaze. Clutching his sleeve as if they hadn’t just met, he pulled Baekhyun closer to him until the tips of both of their soaking wet shoes met. “You’re wrong. There is no God.”  
  
The splashing of rain resembled distant gunshots, the wailing of the wind that of people dying. Baekhyun didn’t know how to continue this conversation since the other looked ready to start crying at any moment, thus did he grab his hand instead of arguing, beginning to tentatively drag him out of their shelter.  
  
There was no point in waiting for the bus to arrive when they both knew perfectly well that it wouldn’t.  
  
“Whatever, you’re probably right,” he said with a smile which for some strange reason did not need feigning, not really meaning the words he had just pronounced, but feeling a bit bad for having upset the other. He knew no reason as to why he would, but it felt better than expected to play along with this stranger whose sorrowful eyes widened once again. “It’s not like God is even good for anything,” he chuckled whilst ignoring that something clicked at those words, that some minor part of him seemed to actually agree in spite of him having lived years as a convinced believer. Perhaps he had just always been bitter at God—the thought of that being true to some extent did not feel impossible at all in the end as he could no matter how much he tried not recall even a single service.  
  
The wind kept casting branches from all sides, debris of all kinds already floating in the cascades of rainwater rising as each minute passed by. Still holding onto the other’s hand, suddenly determined to bring them both to safety, he raised his voice in order to overpower the storm and the sound of missiles hidden among raindrops.  
  
“I’m Baekhyun, by the way, but you can call me Baek,” he shouted, prepared to sprint alongside the other and leap over puddles that had by now grown into lakes. “Do you live on campus?”  
  
The stranger offered him a shy little nod whilst entwining their fingers as though they had done so before.  
  
“I’m Yixing,” he responded as their feet began to move, tightening the clasp without letting go. “But you can call me Xing.”  
  
The water was clear and innocent in itself, but turned dirty and opaque as it hit the cold asphalt. The sky, of course, showed no sign of clearing up yet, and the sound of its rain and a sudden hail kept drowning out that of a hundred armed aircraft. No one had expected them to enter the city only hours after the warning had been issued, and so, right beneath them and the thick black clouds, Baekhyun and Yixing kept running towards safety. Happily unaware of what was happening above and with their hands refusing to let go of each other, they made silly promises like those of old friends as though they had spent not just minutes, but lifetimes together.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
_It took Baekhyun days to locate the spot as a storm had come to wash the blood all away. Recalling one of their past conversations as he fell to his knees before the place where he had lost him, he let his sense of remorse be heard, screamed out apologies at the top of his lungs until his eyeballs were painted red by broken vessels._  
  
“ _Baek?” was what Yixing had mumbled one night as they had sneaked out from the barracks before the great declaration. “Do you think there’s a God?”_  
  
_Baekhyun had laughed then and pulled him into an embrace whilst in his head wondering for the thousandth time how his precious friend had become so delusional._  
  
“ _No, I don’t,” had been his response, pronounced clearly and without hesitation. “There’s no God, Xing,” had been his only answer. “There never was, and there never will be.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment what you think as this is the first time I've written a baekxing-fic this long ♡


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